From the outset it is important to understand that the railway industry does not perceive road and rail as somehow involved in an endless Manichean struggle for supremacy. There are areas in which rail cannot provide the right sort of service, or certainly cannot do so economically. Similarly roads are often a poor way to meet user need.
Travelling not less, but better
Stephen’s arguments are also difficult to tackle in the present context, as they are strongly based on the Fabian view that somehow the state can direct the individual’s basic social behaviour. Of course government, in theory, has untrammelled power of action. It can reduce speeds on roads and railways; it can double the tax on fuel or insist rail fares are similarly hiked; it can direct, through the planning mechanism, where people live. But there has to be democratic support for such measures. I do not think that, despite the much heralded ‘crisis in transport policy’, these would be readily forthcoming. All these measures seem to be over-dramatic ways of tackling an area that is a problem but not a crisis.
Most of us share with Stephen a concern about the pressures on the South East of England but the practical realities are that, despite a wide range of policies to discourage this growth and the very high cost of living, there continues to be a significant increase in economic and social activity in the region. Reversing this would not be an issue of gentle persuasion. It would require draconian legislation that would be impossible to justify. Instead, we have to plan to meet the challenge.
Transport networks must meet user need. Moreover, transport is a relatively low cost in overall infrastructure and property terms. For example, the value of an average London suburb property vastly exceeds the value of its transport links. The cost of building transport infrastructure to meet people’s total needs looks very cheap in comparison with doing it the other way round. This is an issue that Ken Livingstone and Transport for London has began to exploit in their building development levy.
Stephen Plowden’s assumption that people should be encouraged to travel less is going to be a difficult one to get across. A revival of the wartime slogan, “Is your journey really necessary?” would be greeted with derision. The facts are that greater economic prosperity increases the demand for travel. There is a theoretical limit to this of course but it has not yet been reached.
Planning for the real world
It is probably helpful to deal with Stephen’s key statistical and policy points before discussing a number of technical issues. The first is the issue of growth. I think that we can all agree that the ten-year plan has a number of flaws. However, it was a brave attempt to define a long-term strategy with a view to integrating road and rail, an issue that no government in recent times has even attempted to tackle seriously. It set growth figures for rail that were based on best information at the time.
The Railway Forum believes that these figures could well be exceeded. Furthermore, providing we make the right investment in capacity, growth will continue strongly into the decade beyond 2010. Rail usage in the UK is at a very low level in comparison with both most other European countries and the Government’s growth targets; regarding the latter, the projection that the present five per cent share of the market will increase to 7.5 per cent is very modest. In fact there is every indication that, even if little more is done than patching up the infrastructure, demand will grow by thirty per cent by 2010. To say that no attempt has been made to justify the ten-year plan targets rather misses the point.
Factoring in the environment
Stephen makes a major issue of the fact that railways are themselves damaging to the environment. We would not reject this contention, as all forms of transport use energy. However, it is clear that railways take up much less space than the roads carrying equivalent levels of traffic. They are also much less polluting.
The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL) is cited as a highly environmentally damaging project. The Railway Forum does not agree. Rather, CTRL is an example of where significantly higher cost (both in financial and energy expenditure terms) has been engendered to meet environmental concerns at every stage. We cannot agree either that CTRL is completely un-economic. It is the first piece of a jigsaw of bringing high-speed train operation to the UK mainland.
Stephen also leaves out the fact that the existence of high-speed lines across Kent will significantly improve commuting times at the eastern end of the county. This will make a significant contribution to the regeneration of one of the less prosperous areas of the South East.
I recognise that Stephen’s viewpoint is coloured by his dislike of high speed. Unfortunately the railways meet his specification already. Much of the UK’s railway system is restricted to seventy miles per hour, and slower, operation. The people who use the network want us to go faster. When a particular service speeds up, traffic growth is very significant. Also, high-speed and capacity can go together.
The problem is that so much of Britain’s railways are mixed traffic in that different types of train are trying to use the same piece of track at different speeds. This is what eats up capacity and impacts on reliability.
The railway future: safe, fast, punctual
The comment that London Underground should try to get the existing lines in order before embarking on new ones does not look much like an integrated policy. There is a lot to do on the existing system but there are many pinch points where maintenance and a bit of upgrading are not going to meet user needs. Also the Underground still does not serve many areas of the capital. Those who live in Hackney, and commuters trying to struggle through difficult and limiting interfaces at London mainline stations that can only be resolved by major new lines, have a more positive attitude to such schemes.
The problems of Britain’s railways are essentially part of the wider failure of national planning and investment. In many parts of the country, particularly around the great conurbations, this requires a significant increase in capacity. It also requires much better integration.
Finally, those who use the network, both freight and passengers, want punctuality, safety and speedy services. There can be no turning back the clock on this. There is no public support for railway investment that produces a slower service, designed primarily to re-engineer the way we live. Instead, we should be providing the capacity to meet the real, not the theoretical, needs of the people we serve.
